[Leica] OT: Adobe CS3 beta removal

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

There is nothing off-topic about Photoshop technology, especially something 
so major as CS3.

I just downloaded the CS3Clean script from Adobe. It's a Python script. My 
profession these days is the managing of people who administer computer 
systems, and in order to review and evaluate their work, I do a lot of 
script reading, including Python. The mail software that we use to talk to 
each other here on the LUG is written in Python, so I'm quite fluent in it.

So I've studied this script, whose name is "CS3Clean.py".

Some comments.

It does appear to have been written in Japan, and some of its complexity 
comes from the localization into Japanese and Western languages with respect 
to file naming and string matching. It also has some complexity because it 
needs to deinstall Macromedia products as well as Adobe products; they will 
have been installed with radically different conventions.

Most of the complex part, though, is a traversal of the Windows registry 
trying to find things that need to be removed and that can be removed 
safely. It makes the assumption that if the registry keyname contains one of 
['adobe', 'macromedia', 'versioncue', 'flv' ,  'flash' , 'com.macromedia' , 
'com.adobe' , 'acrobat' , '8.0_x86' , 'caps.db' , 'cs3' , 'backup'] then it 
is safe to delete provided that you found it in a proper place. But if you 
have installed some other program that specified a 
registry key named "flv" or "caps.db", then there /might/ be trouble.

Here's my summary of whether you should stress about this Beta removal issue:

* If you are a Mac user, have a beer. The Mac beta removal is simple and 
straightforward and will not give you problems.

* If you are a Windows user and you are the sort of person who likes to muck 
about with your Registry, then be afraid, be very afraid. Kiss your weekend 
goodbye.

* If you are a Windows user and
   - you have installed only one version of Beta CS3, and never updated
   - your Macromedia use is confined to Dreamweaver and Fireworks
   - you have not been having Registry problems
  then have half a beer, and say a short prayer. It will probably be fine.

* If you are a Windows user, and you use Flash, and you upgraded to Vista 
after you
  installed CS3 Beta (so that the Vista installation modified your CS3 Beta 
installation),
  then have a valium and be prepared to call Adobe Tech Support. And make 
sure your
  files are backed up before you even think about starting this process.

The Perfect Storm here is that CS3 is a merger of CS2 and Macromedia, and 
that Vista has changed a number of assumptions that were made, especially by 
Macromedia, and has possibly mutated the installed software into a 
hard-to-kill monster.

Brian Reid